everything you all said ties-into and depends on the type of monster leveling system you pick whether if it's the system where you dived your map up into chunks and have certain level monsters in each area or you feed you player monsters to keep he/she at a certain level or have the monsters levels go up with the hero player level or the group average level

edit: and monsters can eat gold you know or eat people who have gold on them

don't just go by your definition of fun let other people play your game what is/isnot "fun" is and will be different for other people

That doesn't make your assumption any less wrong.

OK, so let's look at Chrono Trigger.

Is there really a difference between Crono and Marle? Well, Crono uses swords and Thunder Magic. Marle uses Cross-bows and Water/Ice Magic. Outside of those details, (and the fact that Marle does less damage with Fight than Crono), they're basically the same. They both eat up resources. They are both MageWarriors.

Contrast this with FF2e.

Kain is a Dragoon. He can Fight or perform a Jump attack. He can keep doing these things forever. He is very different from Rydia, whose fighting skills aren't worth bothering with. However, she can lay waste to vast hordes. Of course, this consumes magic, which is not unlimitted.

The notion of who consumes resources and who doesn't is a fundamental divide. If everybody consumes resources, then you play everybody the exact same way. However, if some consume resources, and some don't, then you change how you play based on the battle.

In FF2e, you rely more on your fighter-type characters in normal combat than your wizards. And, even then, your wizards tend to be using whatever weapons they have rather than casting precious spells. In boss fights, that changes; you go full-burn on your wizards and have your fighters stand in reserve (to heal your wizards).

Contrast this with FF3e. Essentially, everybody can learn magic. Therefore, the pool of resources is huge. You burn magic whenever you feel like it (when an enemy has an elemental affiliation). You do this because your party of 4 is not likely to run short of magic before you get to a place where you can Tent or otherwise recover magic.

If everybody does the same job, then the entire point of having different characters evaporates; you may as well have 4 characters that are all the same.

Someone finds it. You're playing the part of the character that does.

But this doesn't explain why collecting weapons is fun.

Why is any of what you have listed fun? I don't like these conventions, and they don't have to be used.

Defending lazy design on the basis of, "It's fun!" without providing any evidence of this "fun" is bad form.

So tell me, what is the difference between Crono and Marle? Besides details like, "Crono is better against creature X?" Do they get used any differently? No; they both cast magic and consume the MP resource.

If Crono didn't consume magic, then they would be two characters that are played and used in entirely different fashions. In this case, the choice of one over the other is, "Do I need more damage-over-time or more instantaneous damage, but resource consuming?"

Oh, the two characters, in terms of plot, look, etc. are different, but in the terms of a combat system, they're virtually identical.

But does it fit the character's personality?

Rydia's "character class" (whether it's an explicit name or an implicit grouping of skills) is more than just something attached to the character; it is a part of who she is. And a big one at that. She's pretty hardcore about being a Caller; for her to spend any time not "leveling up" (once again, whether it is an explicit class or implicit skills) in Caller would be an anathema to her personality.

As such, allowing the player to do this would be destroying who she is. She becomes, "Just another piece of clay" or set of Lego blocks for the player to play with.

Yes, but none of that matters in combat. We are talking about combat abilities, after all.

In combat, what makes her unique is that she has White Magic and can effectively use arrows (thus allowing her to do damage from the back row effectively).

It may very well be just a hack they added in to make her more useful.

And, as I pointed out before (which, I noticed, you ignored completely), having a "choose-your-own-character" system is very dangerous, as well as destroys the differences between characters. After all, if Character A could have been what Character B is now, what makes Character A important (outside of plot points revolving around A)?

Whether you have clearly-defined classes or not, the statement is still true; if you screw up even slightly in the design, you're screwed.

That's part of a character's personality. Unless you're willing to swap pages of dialog based solely on an arbiturary choice of each member of the party (and potentially, subquests and main-story quests), then the character's personality as shown in plot moments will not be the same as that revealed by the character's choice of skills/class.

And, of course, doing all that work has little appreciable gain; the player won't really appreciate it, and it does little to make the game more interesting.

No, what I'm doing is telling a story. A story involves people. That the main character used the Vorpal LongSword +5 or the +2 Dancing Thundering LongSword is unimportant; therefore, the player can swap weapons as provided. If the plot requires that he uses the newly-forged +12 Hackmaster Sword of Doom, then the player either doesn't get a choice, or he will not be able to win/progress without using this sword.

In a story, a character that has been a swordsman all his life doesn't suddenly take up wizardry; he doesn't have the patience or the know-how. If he's been using a short-sword since he first learned how to fight, then he's not going to suddenly switch to using a 2-handed GreatSword, even if it is the Sword of Ultimate Power (OK, for that, he might decide to switch).

The point is, if you're making a story, you don't want the player to be able to interfere in the story. You want to have the character's personalities, as defined in the story, be the basis of their skills. You want the story to proceed along the guidelines that you write when you wrote the story.

If you wrote a story that allows branching, fine. If you wrote a linear one, that's fine too. The point is, the story is what matters.

NWN desperately tried to make Intelligence and Charisma matter, but it just didn't work out. Certainly, they didn't matter one way or another to the story.

Besides, I much prefer "Strategy games with cut scenes" like FF2e to "RPG's" like NWN.

That's the fundamental idea. It's just lazy design to accept some convention (like arbiturary stuff found in various places where it doesn't belong) just because that's the convention for avoiding Reality Issue X. If you can't make Reality Issue X fun, then at the very least, you could try to use a different convention for Reality Issue X.

Take Earthbound, for example. Killing monsters didn't get you money, per se. You got money by going to an ATM machine, and finding out that your Dad had added more to your account. Granted, this money is added in proportion to the number and type of monsters you have slain since the last time you were there. But, the point is that you can work around un-fun reality issues without resorting to the same old tricks.

Many games cause you to take fall damage. It may not quite be physically precise, but the damage is there. Some people would dearly love to have gun maintenance/jamming be a part of Planetside. And Bushido Blade was, apparently, successful enough with it's more realistic approach to sword damage to warrent a sequel.

The point is that many people find these kinds of things to be fun and enjoyable. Just because you aren't one of them doesn't mean that there is no fun to realism.

Watch TV, read books, go to a movie. What you will find is that characters are never visibly shown eating, sleeping, or going through any of these kinds of routine things unless it is important to the story.

It's not so much "more fun", but that you're cutting out the very boring middle man. It's not "more fun" as "less boring".

I make games for other people as part of my job. When I'm doing it on my time, I make the games that I want to make.

If you say so.
Of course that's one way to handle it. You could also make one more effective in melee, the other more effective in ranged combat.
You could give one character the ability to slow enemies down.
You could give one character the ability to use area attacks.
One character could have a good defense, the other a good attack.
You could give one character ESP skills.
You could even give one character non-combat skills (shocking ideas, eh?)

Let's assume that these two characters play the same way. That's just a problem with the way this game handles that. It doesn't mean two characters can't be very different even if they both eat resources.
Once again: Don't limit yourself

Because we humans are collectors. We have always been. We also like to show-off with our little toys (wow, I've a +4 sword... nice).
In fact, just the little jingle with the item-found animation is rewarding.
Collecting stuff is fun.
Collecting stuff which makes your character better is oven more fun.
The reason for this is simply reward. You do something, you get a goodie.
Very simple.

Sure. It's my character. If I play a roleplaying game I should be the one in control.
If I'm forced to play a character in a certain way, that takes away the roleplaying.

Nope.
We're talking about a roleplaying system.

Dangerous? Why that?
And again, if you have lots of skills to choose from, and if these skills are balanced, don't you think the player will choose to create a spellcaster to deal with the magic problems, a good melee fighter, a good ranged fighter and some avarage chars?

And even if he wants to create a group of similar chars - no problem.
If you want to play with a group of dwarven knights, play with a group of dwarven knights.

That's the choice of the player.

Great. Then play strategy games. Code and design strategy games.
But don't try to make every game a strategy game

Cool. But then don't be surprised if you're the only one liking them

Dunno why that would be dull and meaningless, but what about Chemists in FFT?

KOTOR? Never played it, but I kinda get that impression (playing light/dark) ...

Using resources in different ways? Ninjas have a limit to weapons they can throw (and how many, and to what effect), mages have magic points, some characters can spend a turn charging/focusing/etc., characters with access to them have items as resources (again, Chemists), or using a resource that builds up over time/damage taken, etc.

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Is there really a difference between Crono and Marle?
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there is a big difference first of all their starting stats make them different crono can take more hits then marle 2nd their weapons make them different crono triger uses the time battle system Marle fill up her time bar more befor get hit by most monster because she stands far away from the monster then crono

that is big difference, if crono is dead or dieing; becaues of Marle distance from the monsters she has the abilty to get of ,life, cure or some kind of potion to keep your party up and fighting

see you just further proved that theres difference between them replay the game go to the town up the top on the left there a robot fight him and that will prove it even further look at when they take thier places for battle they dont just stand any were each has thier set distance from the monster

i dont think thats was the result your first time playing the game that robot was suppose to be you first battle you obviously play it and then went to the forest first the 2nd time around

edit: or you could have cheated and tab up your people

but pettey much the choce affter the starting stats are up to the player

I'm pretty sure you are aware that NWN uses the D20 D&D system for determining the outcome of a conversation. As such, it is reduced to dice rolling and therefore boring and meaningless.

And read the annoying garble-speak of low-intelligence characters? No thank you.

But, in general, with a Halfling Rogue, I'd pick up a meat-shield (not surprisingly, a Half-Orc Barbarian) as a henchman. With a Half-Orc Barbarian, I need Rogue skills, so I'll pick up a Halfling Rogue.

The end result: no change.

It doesn't mean other people don't either.

No, but it does mean you have a choice to make, and that this choice has consequences: either make a lot of gameplay that the player will likely never see (to support your multiple methods to solve problem X) as well as taking the change of creating a loop-hole in the combat system that makes Uber-characters, or not.

Dominant strategies is one thing. Unless you don't do any significant testing, you can usually find out where the user can employ a strategy that is considered too powerful. We're talking about breaking the combat system entirely. Like my example with the Monk that can make 20+ attacks per round with a really good base-attack bonus; this is clearly game-damaging im most situations.

Intelligence is used to cast spells as a Wizard. Wisdom gives Monks bonuses.

Outside of these things, INT/WID don't matter. Here's why.

You now have to make sure all the bases are covered. If a character who is not a Paladin comes by, who is unable to do the fast-talking, disguising, or bluffing, you have to make sure that he can still get the item. Which, in this case, means he has to now go off and complete some silly side-quest.

This kinda kills the plot. You're not really progressing the game, because the purpose of the game isn't to get the chalice. Now, whatever it was that you were trying to accomplish is dependent on some sub-task.

Also, it means you have to create a lot of potential gameplay that the user will never see.

Have you ever GM'ed before? You choose the plot based on the avaliable characters, not in spite of them (trust me; I've tried it the other way around. It doesn't work too well). The character's skills and class are part of what makes them who they are; this changes what that character will do.

If you have a party of a Neutral Evil Rogue, a Chaotic Neutral Ranger, and a Chaotic Evil Fighter, as a GM, you're not going to try some "Save the Kingdom" plot. These charaters are just not interested in it, based simply on their choice of alignment and class. You're more likely to go with a "Kill this guy who stole our stuff" or something more personal.

Considering that I find the games on your last list to be failures at being enjoyable overall, I don't see the point you were trying to make. How is the Final Fantasy method of RPG's not viable? After all, FF games are, first and foremost, about telling a story.

As for "If you want to tell a story, you should write a novel," a novel is a different medium for telling stories. It is not a definitive medium; it can never really provide enough details to be definitive. A videogame, like a movie or a TV show, can be much more definitive than a book.

Damn ... FFI was ahead of its time

But really, the games with "hardcoded" plots generally have the good plots. Could things as memorable as Aeris' death happen in those free-roaming games? I'm guessing they have their own appeal, since I've never had occasion to play one But I likes me old-school RPG's

Hehe
Guess my point is only that I think both ways are possible (and fun), while Korval insists that having a flexible engine breaks everything.
And that every player wants to play the same games in the same way he wants to play them

And a RPG that's reduced to combat is more or less either a strategy or an action game (depending on how the combat is resolved).